Even in biophils comment that you quoted, he says "This wouldn't change any weekly averages, but he could grab a bunch of influence in spurts. Still, he was almost certainly a lot better off before the change."
Basically, what hes saying is that you'll still lose out overall, but you will still be able to cast more vote power with your 100% vote (just not much more)
In this example, the total voting power drops from 400 to 170? Does this point to the inconsistency in the total between now and after the change that I am apparently not grasping?
Yes. So your 100% vote will be stronger, just not 8x stronger (like it would have to be for you to "break even" on going from 40 to 5 votes.)... How much stronger depends on how many inactive curators there are that get a bump from the change.
Active curators will definitely lose out.... it just has yet to be seen how much. If I had to make a spitball guess, I'd say theyll lose about 1/2 of their daily vote power in money terms.